Matt, Henry’s grandson, meets me at the door. There’s an air of lean and focused competency about him that the lanyard round his neck only accentuates. ‘Luckily I only work round the corner,’ he says. ‘Mum would normally be here but she had to go abroad on business. She’s left me a list of things to ask…’ He waves his phone in the air. ‘I don’t want to scare you, but it’s pretty comprehensive. Anyway, let me make the introductions.’
Henry is sitting in a plush leather armchair. Behind him is a bookcase neatly filled with history books, mostly on warfare as far as I can tell. Jane’s Fighting Ships, Stalingrad, Winston Churchill: The Early Years, and then on a lower shelf, a spread of thrillers by Ludlum, Harris, Forsyth and so on. Henry himself could’ve stepped fully-made from any of those books. There’s something about the way he sits, his stick resolutely planted in front of him, his back straight, his eyes sighted along his nose, his hair geometrically combed and parted. Even his cardigan is ironed.
‘Good morning!’ he says. ‘Excuse me if I don’t get up. It’s this damned hip!’
Matt sits down on a chair midway between us, his phone in his hands, waiting for the right opportunity to jump in. ‘Do you mind if I record this?’ he says. ‘It’s quicker than typing.’
I tell him I don’t mind, although it makes me a little self-conscious.
I begin by explaining who I am and what I’ve come to do. Henry nods and listens, closing his eyes at one point and dropping his chin, so he can concentrate more fully on what I’m saying.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘That’s fine. Excellent. Let’s crack on, shall we?’
I carry out the assessment and record his obs, fielding Matt’s questions as I go. What exactly is the Rapid Response Service? Is it strictly three days, or are there extensions sometimes? Will we be able to advise on packages of care? Will a physiotherapist be visiting? It’s actually quite refreshing to explain all these things. It makes me realise what a great service it is.
‘Thanks!’ he says, pressing the phone. ‘That should do it!’
‘The family look after me very well,’ says Henry. ‘I couldn’t ask for better.’
‘You’re worth it, Grandpa,’ says Matt.
Henry suddenly looks downcast and I ask him if there’s anything wrong.
‘It’s my wife, Jean,’ he says. ‘She has dementia. I’m afraid it all got too much and she had to go into a home.’
‘A good one,’ says Matt. ‘We looked at a lot. Really, it’s the best.’
‘Yes, yes. They’re all very kind,’ says Henry. ‘It’s just – well, I normally make it over to see her every other day. But after the fall I was in hospital for a few weeks, as you know. And now I’m stuck here, hobbling about like a damned fool.’
‘I’ve offered to take him in the car but he can’t manage getting in and out,’ says Matt. ‘Anyway, small comfort, I know, but at least she doesn’t realise he hasn’t been. She doesn’t even recognise him when he’s there.’
Henry raps his stick on the carpet and snaps at him.
‘Matthew! We’ve been married sixty-five years. Sixty-five! It’s immaterial whether she recognises me or not. She’s still Jean, you know. She’ll always be Jean.’
Matt shakes his head.
‘Sorry, Grandpa. Sorry. Of course.’
‘If you can sit in a chair you can always get a chair-friendly taxi to take you round’ I tell him, bringing things back to the practicalities. ‘Worth a thought.’
‘Good idea!’ says Henry. He brightens, and glances over to Matt, who immediately waves his phone in the air and smiles.
‘Got it!’ he says.

Lola the poodle has lost interest and taken herself back to her crate, turning round and round on her blanket, then plonking down in a heap.
There’s not much space in the front room these days, so Bernard’s collection of World War Two fighter planes, the Stukas and Messerschmitts, Spitfires and Hurricanes, have all been dumped together on top of her crate. Temporarily.
‘I don’t feel unwell,’ says Bernard, running his hand backwards and forwards across the top of his head. ‘Just bloody knackered. If you’d told me it’d be like this, well…’
Lola looks up at him through the muddle of wings and propellers, then sighs and settles her face down on her front paws, flicking her attention between Bernard and me, and occasionally licking her chops.
It feels strange to be here, like I’ve been sent to assess the Bog Man in the British Museum. I’m just going to do your blood pressure, prising open the display case, putting my stethoscope to the withered arm – How are you feeling? – as security staff hurry over, shouting into radios.
It’s certainly a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit, though. Bernard shouldn’t really be here. If you shut your eyes and ran your finger down the long list of things he suffers from, you could be sure any one of them you stopped on would finish you off in short order.
I have a quick read of the ambulance sheet. Bernard suffered a non-injury fall in the early hours. He’s so underweight, it must have taken him a full minute from leaving the chair to impacting the soft, shag-pile carpet. He would barely have dented the fibres.
The crew got him up again and referred him on to us.
‘I’m so annoyed with myself,’ he says. ‘This’ll be the first reunion I’ve ever missed.’
‘Don’t worry, love,’ says his wife, Elsie, coming into the room with another folder of notes.
(Lola looks up).
‘There’s always next year.’

Mary’s son, Ethan, has come straight out of the shower.
‘She’s upstairs in bed,’ he says, one hand holding the door, the other the towel round his middle. ‘Excuse me whilst I finish off.’

The commotion in the hall has woken Mary.
‘I’m normally a bit more with it,’ she says, struggling to push herself more upright. ‘But you see I had a restless night last night and I feel all…’ She smacks her lips drily and waggles her fingers in the air to illustrate.
I explain who I am and what I’ve come to do.
‘Be my guest,’ she says. ‘Only first let me get my plate in. I’ll make more sense.’

I work through the obs. Ethan brings in a tray of tea and then sits down in a low, fabric armchair to drink a cup. He’s the polar-opposite of naked now, wearing a heavy-knit, patterned sweater, khaki trousers and sandals, all perfectly in keeping with the general, Nordic style of the place: wooden carvings of dragons, masks and heroic figures, prints and sketches, framed academic scrolls. Mary has a bearskin over the bed.
‘I was younger then, very little observable conscience,’ she says, gently stroking the fur. ‘Poor thing. I feel guilty as hell now, of course, but there you are, the deed was done.’
‘Did you kill the bear yourself?’
‘May as well have.’

When it comes to having blood taken she’s not quite so sanguine.
‘I have a bit of a phobia,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t help that I’m difficult. My veins dive for cover whenever they see a needle. See what you think – but please, not the hands!’
‘I can’t believe you’re ninety-five,’ I tell her, tapping around for anything remotely usable.
‘Nor can I. Do you know – I distinctly remember when I was seven years old. I’d come down to visit my grandmother, and she’d taken me for a stroll by the sea. Well, we came across all these ancient folk, on a day out from the local hospital. Being wheeled along the promenade in what amounted to giant baskets on wheels.  You see at that time I was mad about climbing trees. If I saw a tree, I was up it! No better than a squirrel. No bigger than one, I should think. I remember my grandmother solemnly pointing to the old folk’s parade, and saying If you carry on climbing trees, that’s how you’ll end up. It didn’t do any good, of course. I didn’t agree with her then and I don’t now. I think climbing trees and the rest of it is what kept me fit. Up until now, of course. Any luck with the … you know what?’
‘No. I’m afraid not. You’re going to need a specialist.’
‘Bad luck, mother,’ says Ethan, draining his cup and springing to his feet. ‘More tea?’

A lovely terraced house, pots of herbs following the line of steps up to the front door, an antique boot scraper, a lion’s head knocker. Inside it’s quite another matter. The place looks ransacked. Even the kitty litter is scattered about.
Ray lives here. He’s forty-eight. He has a bowel condition, but he copes.  What’s more difficult to manage are his recurrent bouts of severe depression. At its worst, he doesn’t even get out of bed to go to the toilet. He’s been sectioned in the past. It’s looking likely it’ll happen again.
I’ve been sent round last thing in the evening to see he’s okay, and administer his medication with some sandwiches and a cup of tea. I know the tea-time carers had a job cleaning him up, changing his bed clothes and so on. I’m hoping he won’t need more of the same; luckily for me, all he needs is food and meds.

Whilst I’m in the kitchen preparing everything, Ray’s lodger comes back from work. A young guy in a dry-marker goatee, rumpled suit, tie down a notch, work bag over his shoulder, lopes in. It’s quite a shock, seeing someone so urbane in such chaotic circumstances, like an IT consultant blithely wandering onto the set of an intense police drama.
How can he bear to live here? How is he managing?
Of course I don’t say any of this. Instead I make the usual chit-chat. How was his day? The weather. This n’that. He gets something out of the fridge whilst I carry on making the sandwich. I have my back to him, so I’m not sure what he’s doing. I hear the clicking of a camera. When I glance round, he’s holding a small tin of something in front of him, taking pictures of it.
Is it something mouldy from the fridge? Is he building a dossier of his dreadful surroundings, to make some kind of claim?
I can’t help being more direct.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Chestnut pate,’ he says, holding it out to me.
‘Oh.’
‘Yep. A friend bought it – ooh, must be well over a year now. I’ve only just got round to opening it. But – uhm…you know…’
He sniffs it, turns it round speculatively.
‘…it’s a bit sweet for my taste. I wanted to tell him, but I thought I’d better send a picture as well. So he’d know what the hell I was talking about.’

When Lionel smiles it’s like the friendly gape of a wet-mouthed hound, the fleshy corners of his mouth a little sad and down.
‘Do come in!’ he says, but he doesn’t make quite enough room in the vestibule, especially as there’s another, inner door to open, and as I’m laden down with obs bag, weighing scales, folder and other things, we’re forced to do a little dance in the limited space available.
‘If you could just…’
‘Sorry…’
‘I tell you what, if you…’
‘Of course….’
‘That’s it!’
We manage to get the door closed, and stand together in the main hallway, an impressive room, with a geometrically tiled floor, an ornamental fireplace, and a chandelier hovering above our heads like some elaborate, crystalline spaceship.
‘If you’d like to come this way,’ he says. I follow him through into the living room.
‘You have a lovely house, Lionel.’
‘Thank you. That’s so kind. It’s just me now, of course. I rattle around somewhat. I’m thinking of downsizing.’
‘Really?’
‘Thinking about it! It’s hard to move when you’ve been in a place as long as we have. Sixty years, this autumn. But Gloria passed last year, so now it’s just me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes. Well.’
He sits in his armchair, and begins turning his wedding band round and round.
‘It’s supposed to get easier,’ he says. ‘Time the great healer and all that guff. But you know, I don’t think it does. If anything, it gets harder.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well you see, to begin with I was so busy. There was lots to do. People kept coming round, family and so on. How are you coping, Lionel? Do you have everything you need, Lionel? Taking me places and so on and so forth. But that can’t go on forever. People have their own lives. So it all falls away rather, and you’re left to your own devices. It’s the little things that take you by surprise. I’d just finished reading this…’
He picks up a book on Hollywood from the side table. ‘And it just happened to mention The Day the Earth Stood Still. Have you heard of it?’
‘Absolutely! It’s famous.’
‘Oh! Then you may be interested to know that Gloria knew the robot.’
‘Really?’
‘Or the man who played the robot, at least. When she was a student in California back in the fifties, she had a job selling tickets at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, and the doorman there, a really tall chap, got hired to play Gort. I remember she said they were jealous as anything at first, but as it turned out, he didn’t have a nice time of it. Half suffocated to death in the rubber suit, by all accounts.’
He puts the book back on the table and folds his hands on his lap.
‘Now it’s just me, sitting on my own, thinking about robots.’

It’s started to rain.
I’ve left my jacket in the car.
I can’t open the keysafe.
‘Shit.’
I put my stuff down and have another go.
But no matter how hard I try, nothing works, no cunning combination of turns or taps or slaps.
Luckily, Eleanor’s lunchtime carer shows up.
‘Who you from?’ she says.
I show her my ID, pulling it out to her on its extendable line. She’s so ferocious, I imagine her grabbing the card, spinning me round and choking me to death with it, Bourne-style. Instead she just sniffs disparagingly and glares me out of the way.
‘What you do here?’ she says. I’m not sure whether she means the keysafe or why I’ve come, but by the way she attacks the keysafe, I guess it’s the former.
‘The numbers don’t work,’ I say, hopelessly.
‘What means numbers not work?’ she says, flipping the safe open and jangling the keys in my face. ‘Hmm?’
I pick up my stuff again and follow her in.
She calls up the stairs.
‘Elllliiiiiinnnnnooooooorrrrr! Is AAAhhhhnnnnnnaaaaahhhhh!’
Then she glances over her shoulder.
‘Eleanor upstairs,’ she says. ‘I go kitchen. You do what it is you do first.’

Eleanor is asleep in a high-backed armchair in the bedroom, both hands grasping the armrests, her face squashed up, as if she’s dreaming of riding in an open top sports car. When I touch her gently on the arm and say her name, she opens the eye nearest to me and fixes me with it.
‘What!’
‘Sorry to wake you, Eleanor. My name’s Jim. I’m with the Rapid Response Team at the hospital. I’ve come to see how you’re doing.’
She rolls about in the armchair, struggling to sit more upright. When I offer to help she bats me away, then carries on muttering and rolling until she’s worked herself into a better position.
‘Now then. Tell me again. What is it that you want?’

 *

 I chat to her whilst I write down the observations.
‘Did you work?’
‘Did I work? Of course I worked! I was a veterinary surgeon for fifty years. Why must one be treated like an imbecile? Not you, so much. I’m speaking generally.’
‘I have the greatest respect for vets,’ I tell her, wrapping the blood pressure cuff round her arm. ‘We have a cat and a dog. A lurcher.’
‘A lurcher you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah-hum’
‘Yeah. She ran into some barbed wire a couple of years ago. Had some dreadful cuts down her front. Superficial, thank goodness, but they needed stitching. The vet was so lovely. She did a great job. I think it’s about as skilful branch of medicine as there is.’
‘Possibly. I couldn’t really say.’
‘It must be easier, though, treating people rather than animals. At least a person can tell you what’s wrong.’
‘No, no. I think it’s the other way round. I think people confuse the issue.’
‘Interesting!’
‘Very.’
I finish the exam and write out the ticket.
‘Have you opened your bowels today?’ I ask her.
‘No! I have not! I’m balled up, Jim! Balled up!’
‘Ah hah.’
‘Dry pellets! Acting somewhat in the manner of a bung! And that’s the problem, you see. I had two falls getting off the commode, because I was so long sitting on the damn thing, straining away, my legs went orf.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
I make another note.
‘Do you take anything?’
‘Do I take anything, did y’say? For the constipation?’
‘Yes.’
She sighs and harrumphs, naming the usual treatments.
‘What on earth are we going to do, Jim?’ she says. ‘What do you recommend?’ Then lacing her fingers across her abdomen, she fixes me with her favourite eye again. ‘Take the old gel’ out and shoot her, I s’pose?’

For whatever reason, Peter isn’t answering the intercom. The tradesman’s button doesn’t work, either, and when I try Peter’s mobile it comes up not registered.  I’m just about to phone the office when someone else comes to the door. A red-faced guy in a parka, baseball cap and sweatpants, his eyes so close together at the bridge of his nose he looks like a rangy, inner city Cyclops. When I show him my ID he smiles in a grimacing kind of hunch, exposing a set of wire braces.
‘Okay, mate. In ya’go,’ he says, and flinging his hood over his cap, walks on.

When I knock on Peter’s door there’s a minute or two of silence and then a hesitant hello from deep inside.
‘It’s Jim, from the Rapid Response team. Come to see Peter.’
After a long pause a bolt draws back. Pete stands there, still in the hospital pyjamas he was discharged in almost a week ago, the top unbuttoned to the navel. He is so emaciated, his ribs flare from his sternum in furrows.
‘Oh. Jim. I see. Jim. Yes. From the hospital? Right. And you’ve come to see me? Okay. Right. Got it. And you want to come in? Okay. So – just to re-cap. You’re Jim. You’re from the hospital. And you’ve come to see how I am? Is that right?’
He holds his right hand up to his mouth now and again, the index finger crooked, focusing with such intensity on our interaction  the words buckle under the strain. I find myself talking with elaborate simplicity, like someone trying to speak in a language they don’t really know.
‘I’m a nurse, Peter. From the hospital. I’ve come to see how you are.’
I show him my card. He holds it so long I have to gently take it back again.
‘Is it okay if I come in?’
‘So – basically, basically, you want to come inside, because you’re a nurse from the hospital, and you want to see how I am?’
‘Yes.’
He lets go of the door and slowly retreats back into the flat.

It’s smotheringly hot. Hardly any furniture in the front room, just a sofa and an office chair. To the side of the sofa are half a dozen neat piles of WWF wrestling magazines, I would guess a year to a pile; opposite, a shrine-like arrangement around a radio on the floor of four cuddly toys and a couple of plastic figures, (the kind you get with fast food sometimes). On the deep windowsill opposite are several orderly stacks of letters, bank statements, hospital reminders, all meticulously laid out in a grid, with a black copy of the bible in the bottom left hand corner.

‘Is it okay if I sit here?’ I ask him, pointing to the office chair.
‘Do you want to sit there?’
‘This looks fine.’
‘You can sit on the sofa if you want.’
‘I’m happy with the chair.’
‘The only thing is – the only thing is – I usually sit on the sofa.’
‘I know what you mean. Everyone’s got their favourite spot.’
‘Yes. Everyone’s got their favourite spot. My favourite spot is the sofa. But you’re all right on the chair?’
‘The chair’s fine.’
I put my bag down.
‘Do you have a yellow folder, Peter?’
‘A yellow folder? Yes. A yellow folder.’
I look around.
‘Would you mind if I had a look? Only it’ll have all your bits and pieces in it – you know, notes and things. It’ll be useful to see them.’
He stares at me with a compressed smile.
‘Stuff the nurses have written,’ I add.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And you want to read it?’
‘Yes. I don’t mind getting it.’
He stands up. He’s so emaciated, the pyjamas hang in a line from the angular projections of his shoulders.
‘I know where it is,’ he says, and walks out.
Whilst he’s gone I check my watch and rearrange my caseload.

*

Peter has shown me into his kitchen. To look at it, you’d hardly think anyone lived here. The aluminium sink and drainer are bleach clean. On the work surface to the side of the sink are two boxes of own-brand powdered milk and two catering-size packets of instant coffee, and that’s it. No toaster. No microwave. Just an old-fashioned oven with a flip-down hob, and an empty fridge opposite. Peter seems to be existing on a single delivery of oven-ready meals a day. If it wasn’t for that, he’d be dead by now.
It’s difficult and not a little depressing to think it ever came to this. The only interaction the yellow folder describes is a recent admission to hospital with an ulcerated ankle, and this latest referral to us. Surely he must be known to other services?
‘The ready meals are very good,’ he says, showing me half a pudding left over from yesterday. ‘Yes, they’re very good. I put them in the oven to heat them up. The man comes every day about twelve o’clock with a main course and a pudding. Yes, they’re very delicious.’
‘One thing I really need to do is weigh you,’ I tell him. ‘Would that be all right?’
‘You want to weigh me? Yes. Okay. Weigh me. Fine. I think I might have lost a bit.’
‘Yes. I would think so. You look a little thin to me. For your height.’
‘I’m five foot ten. Is that what you mean? My height?’
‘Yes.’
I work out his BMI as fifteen.
‘You’ll need some special drinks,’ I tell him as he steps off. ‘Fortisip, they’re called. In some really nice flavours. Orange, Vanilla. Like milkshakes, you know. I’ll talk to your GP to get them delivered.’
‘Like the ready meals.’
‘Yes, like the ready meals. But they’re only a supplement, Peter. To build you up in the meantime. All the vitamins and minerals you’re missing at the minute. The thing is, though, Peter, we’ve really got to get you eating properly again. And make sure you’re looked after.’
‘I see. Right. Yes. So – just to recap. You’re a nurse. You’ve come from the hospital. I’m not eating properly. You want me to have special drinks. Milk shake drinks. Some of them are orange, some of them are vanilla. The doctor is delivering them. I’ve got to eat more.’
‘Yes. How does that sound?’
He crooks his finger to his mouth.

‘Normally I’d be outside, soaking up the rays,’ says Jack, nodding at the patio window. Outside in the middle of a rough patch of grass are two white plastic chairs and a rickety white plastic table.
‘That looks like a sunny spot.’
‘It is!’ he says, and resting his walking stick against the side of the armchair, stretches both arms out and turns them this way and that. ‘I bet you’ve never seen such a healthy-looking invalid!’
Jack’s house has that warm but slightly muffled air of a family home that was once filled with people but now has only one. As it happens, my visit has coincided with the district nurses, and I think Jack’s enjoying all the fuss.
‘Jean died a few years ago,’ he says. ‘And I’ll tell you what – this’ll shock you…. Just a couple of days after she’d gone, I got a phone call from an undertakers, not the one I was using, just someone chasing business. What arrangements had I made for the funeral? they said, because they had a space or some such nonsense. After I’d got over the shock of it I thought right, I’ll play ‘em at their own game. I said I didn’t have any money, and I couldn’t afford the usual kind of thing. Oh don’t worry about that, they said. We’ve got some very good deals. How much were you thinking of spending? Not much, I said. As little as possible. In fact I’d been in touch with the council to ask if I could bury her in the garden. In the garden? Yes, I said. The council said that was fine, so long as they provided the gravedigger, because it had to be a certain width and depth. Oh the woman on the phone said. And how much did that cost? Sixty quid all in, I said. Oh! she said. So….is that what you did? You buried your wife in the garden? Don’t be daft, I said. I’m not stupid. I buried her in the garden next door. And she hung up!’
Jack laughs, jabbing his walking stick up and down on the carpet.
‘Jean would’ve appreciated that,’ he says. ‘But look at me! You’ve been here five minutes and I haven’t asked if you want a cup of tea.’

‘So what happened with your leg? I never did get the story.’
‘You want the whole thing?’
I backtrack a little.
‘Maybe just the highlights.’
Malcolm adjusts his position in the chair. He has to use both his hands to help with his left leg, the boot cast is so heavy.
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the house next door,’ he says. ‘Bill and Angela’s. They’re away on a trip. One of those round the world tickets. They’re doing Thailand at the moment.’
I’m glad I didn’t ask for the long version – but there’s something rehearsed and kind of ominous about the way he’s started to lay the whole thing out. Malcolm has obviously told this story a few times already. I’m intrigued to hear it.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Thailand, eh? Great.’
‘So I’ve been taking care of things, looking after the garden. Not a full-on caretaker’s job, but not far off. Anyway, the first evening I was out the back looking over the fence checking everything was okay, when I saw this big old badger heading our way. You get them round here now and again. I’ve always liked badgers. I think they’ve had a lot on their plate, lately. A lot of bad press. So I went back inside to fetch some nuts. He’d gone when I came out again, but a few hours later, so had the nuts.’
‘What sort of nuts?’
‘Mixed. I took out the raisins. I wasn’t sure.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Anyway, I told Jack and Lindsay the other side and they said Oh, I wouldn’t do that. Badgers are real pests. You shouldn’t encourage them. And I must admit at the time I thought What are they talking about! Badgers? But of course, when I went out to look the next evening, there was a big hole in the fence, the flower beds were dug up and the bulbs all thrown about. So I hopped over to put them all back, smoothed the beds over, fixed the fence, added a few bricks to weigh it all down, and hopped back. And I thought that was that. The next day, there was an even bigger hole in the fence, and the bulbs were all over the place again!’
‘What are they using, wire cutters?’
He shrugs.
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, I felt a bit guilty, seeing as how I’d led them on with my nuts. So I thought I’d better sort it out for good. I got a roll of heavy wire out the shed, dragged that over, and made a proper job of fixing the hole, plenty going into the ground to stop them digging down. Short of posting sentries I couldn’t think what else to do.’
‘Bloody badgers.’
‘Yeah, well. So anyway. Job done. That was that. I threw the rest of the wire back into my garden and hopped back over the fence. And that’s when it happened.’
He moves his leg again and winces with the ache of it.
‘D’you know how many times I’ve hopped over that fence?’ he says, gasping.
‘I don’t know. Three?’
‘Hundreds, over the years. It’s quicker than going back and round. There’s a rockery there, which makes it easier. Except this time, my foot slipped between two boulders, and stayed pointing one way whilst I went the other. I ended up with a spiral fracture of the tib and fib. A thorough-going job, the orthopaedic surgeon said. I was conscious when he did the op. He put a block in, so I wouldn’t feel it. I can’t have a general, you see. Anyway, the surgeon – lovely man – he wasn’t half swearing.’
‘Blimey.’
‘And the rest. Here – look at the card Jack and Lindsay made me.’
He reaches over and hands me a homemade thing, a photo of two cute but sharp looking badgers on the front, peering out of a hole. There are speech bubbles over the top. One is saying: Are you sure this is going to work? The other one: Watch and learn, my friend. Watch and learn.

In the corner of the kitchen, a white plastic globe bubbles with a milky fluid, wisps of vapour venting at the top.
‘What’s that?’ I ask Sandra.
‘I’m very conscious of the air I breathe,’ she says. ‘Every time I have a cigarette I turn the machine on to take out the impurities. Watch what happens when I do this…’
She presses a switch. The lighting changes in the globe, green, to purple, to red, to blue.
‘It’s like being in a club,’ I say.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
She sits back down on her stool and glumly surveys her husband. The red quilted silk dressing gown with its velvet cuffs and sash cord should make him a spit for Noel Coward; instead, it only serves to emphasise his pallor, his frailty and his strangely passive demeanour.
‘How do you feel, Stan?’
He lays his sad eyes on me.
‘With these,’ he says, lifting his hands.
‘Answer the man’s questions properly, Stanley,’ says Sandra. ‘He hasn’t got time for your messing about.’
It’s been a fraught interview so far. Some barbed shtick about money for the swear box, leaving the toilet seat up, a barney Sandra had with the doctor, the consultant, what happened when, who turned round and said what to whom. I thought a lot of it was probably bravado, fireworks you put on when you want to show off to visitors. But then I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t figure them out. I felt I had to choose my words carefully, especially with Sandra. I was over-compensating. Sweating, in the over-heated kitchen.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got to take some blood as well,’ I tell Stan. ‘How does that sound?’
‘How much shall I charge him, Sandy?’
‘Just roll up your sleeve.’
‘Righto.’
‘He bruises easy. Don’t you Stan?’
‘I have the skin of a peach. And the face of a coconut.’
He speaks slowly, and without his teeth there’s the trace of a sibilant whistle.
‘We normally see Lily for bloods,’ says Sandra, sighing, picking up her fag packet, giving it a speculative shake and then putting it down again. ‘You know, the nurse at the drop-in. She’s good, is our Lil. Very good. You’d hardly know she’d been there when you see his arm after. Some of them you’d think they got his arm and slammed it in a door. But with Lil, well! He said it was like a butterfly landing on his arm. Didn’t you, Stan?’
‘I did. A lovely, colourful butterfly. Not like those other bloodsuckers.’
‘And she’s funny, too. She could be on the stage. Last time she went on about how she met this fella on holiday and all this and that. Doesn’t she, Stan? She’s hilarious!’
‘She had me in stitches. And not the kind you’re thinking.’
Meanwhile I’m laying out my kit. Sandra comes and sits next to me; Stan gazes down on it all from a great, sad distance.
‘I felt that!’ he says, when I enter the vein.
‘Sorry.’
Sandra tuts.
‘You’ll be black and blue come the morning,’ she says.
Behind her, the globe bubbles red.